


Riptide

by jiemba



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Danvers Sisters, Hurt/Comfort, Sisters, highschool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 05:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11456718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiemba/pseuds/jiemba
Summary: Grieving after Jeremiah's death, 16 year old Alex Danvers struggles with the pressure of being perfect and looking after Kara.





	Riptide

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been trying to write this for so long and it’s never felt quite right, but since it’s Alex Danvers Week I thought I may as well have a go. Very angsty, cw for grief, self harm, suicidal ideation.

In the corner of her high school library, walled in by textbooks, she can almost forget about it all.   
  
She can almost forget how she’ll have to help Kara with her homework tonight, before sorting through bills and making a dinner that Eliza will never thank her for, and then maybe, maybe, finally finishing her history essay before she falls asleep at her desk.   
  
She can almost forget that the memories of him are waiting for her at home, in every corner of the house, the size of corpses.   
  
But even reading about black holes, about the lives and deaths of stars, feels too close. Close like when she’s half asleep in the morning, and she can almost hear the hallway floor creak under his feet, smell his coffee in the kitchen as he reads the paper.   
  
But when she wakes, the grief comes to her brass-knuckled, and the silence that rips through the house is as real and raw as a howl.  
  
She turns up her music, hears The Offspring’s ‘Gone Away’ rush through her headphones. Tastes the lyrics in the back of her throat. Fights the urge to dig her pencil into her forearm, as far as she can bear it to go.   
  
“Hey. I thought I might find you here.”  
  
Daniel’s standing by a shelf, backpack hanging from his shoulder. Alex tries to smile as she tugs off her headphones. “Hey.”  
  
“Did you hear they announced the debating topic for state champs?”  
  
“Shit,” she groans. “Please don’t tell me it’s on farming subsidies again.”  
  
His broadening shoulders shake with the laugh. “God, no. ‘The benefits of animal testing outweigh any ethical dilemmas which may arise from such a practise’. We got affirmative.”  
  
She nods, tries to look excited, knowing that’s what he expects. It’s a science topic.   
  
But all she can think of is how she had to dissect a frog last semester in bio, how the whole class had witnessed the sickened sob that clawed its way out of her throat when she sliced open its stomach with shaking hands. How Vicki had held her hair back for ten whole minutes while she threw up at the thought of her father’s body coming apart just as easily – the body he didn’t even have the fucking decency to leave for her. The thought of pieces of him hundreds of metres apart, peppered across some unknown ocean. Kneecaps lost among coral. Chunks of scalp. Teeth.   
  
How she couldn’t surf for weeks after, because it had felt like swimming in blood, and every brush of seaweed was someone’s hand, someone’s hair. Because she’d see the foam of waves coming up at her in a violent white rush and think, _bodies_.   
  
“You OK?”  
  
She nods again, too quickly. “Yeah. It’s a good topic. Complex.”  
  
“Sure beats farming subsidies.” When he shifts to sit next to her, kissing her cheek, she’s suddenly aware of how different his body is from hers. He’s gotten taller this last year, his shoulders drawing open, his jawline cutting sharper. She can feel the girls studying a few tables down watching her, the way girls always watched her with Daniel Cho, and she can almost hear them wondering the same thing as her. _Why_ _is he with her – depressed, uptight her with the punky eyeliner and the freak sister and the dead dad – when he could have anyone, anyone, anyone?  
_  
With a teasing smirk, he sets a box of fries between them. “Can’t have you forgetting to eat with the debate so close. I need you in fighting shape, kid.”  
  
She looks at the food. Wants none of it. Deliberately reaches, takes a fry, swallows. “Thanks.”  
  
“I’ve got to get a new suit for the comp,” he mentions. “I grew out of last year’s.”  
  
Her stomach squirms at the memory of that suit – how grown up he’d looked in the photo of the two of them holding their trophy, laughing, his arm draped around her shoulders. She can’t look at that trophy anymore – the one Eliza’s expecting her to win _again_. Can’t look at that picture anymore, knowing who’d taken it.   
  
She was a different girl in that picture.   
  
“You looked nice,” she forces out.  
  
“So did you.” When he grabs a clump of fries, his knuckles graze the back of her hand, and she’s immediately aware of every inch of her skin. He pauses a moment, before saying, “It was cool, meeting your dad last year. I remember he helped me with my tie.”  
  
That makes her head snap up, her mouth falling open slightly.  
  
“I’m sorry, should I not have…?”  
  
“No,” she breathes, amazed. “Thank you. Nobody ever mentions him. Like he never existed.”  
  
“But he did,” he says, leaning back against the books. “That’s kind of the only good thing about the pain, I guess. It’s proof that he was real. That you loved him. You know?”  
  
“I never thought about it like that,” she murmurs, wondering who he’d lost to give him that kind of clarity.   
  
“You know you can talk to me whenever, right?”  
  
Shivering at the proximity of their bodies, she shakes her head a little. “I don’t want to talk,” she breathes, and brings his face to hers, releasing but a fraction of her grief into the give of his skin.   
  
She kisses him because she has to. Because she needs to be perfect, because those girls are watching, because Vicki will smile when she tells her about it later. Because her dad had liked him.

She remembers how he’d teased her all the way home from state champs when he saw Alex’s face redden at the suggestion of a crush, how he was only spurred on by Eliza telling him to _leave the poor girl alone, she should be focusing on school_.   
  
Sometimes, when she kisses Daniel, she can almost hear her Dad laugh in the kind of way that fills a car, that lights a highway.   
  
But even now, kissing Daniel still feels like missing the last step of the stairs. His hand comes to her face, his thumb stroking her cheek as if he’s showing her the rhythm, and she feels small in the shadow of his chest.   
  
It’s distracting, she thinks, if she can call it anything.   
  
She almost wants to tell Daniel that his tenderness is wasted on her. But he’s good, and he’s kind, and he was there for her when her dad died, and she owes him this.   
  
_I’m lucky_ , she tells herself, forcing her lips against his, forcing her mind blank. _I’m lucky, I’m lucky, I’m lucky._   
  
He pulls away, smoothly enough not to jar her, and tucks some hair behind her ear. “Do you want some help?” he asks, looking over her notes.   
  
That makes her smile. “Like you could help me with physics.”  
  
“Jeez, OK. Didn’t know I was dating such an elitist. Not all of us can take AP science at 16, you know.”  
  
“Shut up,” she mutters, and he nudges her shoulder, making her blush nervously under his attention, and she wonders, _is this what it feels like to like someone_? But suddenly she remembers how much she has to do, and dread tugs at her gut. “I’m sorry, Daniel, I really do need to study -”  
  
“It’s OK. See you in English,” he says as grabs his bag. “Don’t work too hard, Alex. Please.”  
  
She wants to tell him that she won’t, but when has she ever not worked too hard? When has that ever been an acceptable option?  
  
Their next kiss feels like a relief - when she opens her eyes, he’s walking away. Her head falling back against the shelf, she closes her eyes tight. She doesn’t get to cry. She doesn’t have time.  
  
But the shake in her hands doesn’t leave her, and she forces herself to the bathroom. The whole way, grief stalks her like a shadow, familiar as a sister, and she frantically pulls out her phone to call the number she’s been paying the bills for since it happened, just to keep it open.   
  
_Hello, you’ve reached Jeremiah Danvers. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can._  
  
There’s so much she wants to say.   
  
I miss you.   
  
I love you.   
  
I need you here.   
  
Fuck you.   
  
I’m doing everything you wanted.   
  
Come back.  
  
Please.  
  
Please.  
  
But the only air in her lungs comes out in a wet choke as she dials again, again, scratching her fingernails hard into her ribs.  
  
 _I’ll get back to you as soon as I can._  
  
 _I’ll get back to you as soon as I can._  
  


* * *

  
“It’s beautiful out here,” Vicki murmurs, and in her voice Alex feels wind and sea and sky. The girl’s still catching her breath from her clumsy attempts at surfing, lying back on Alex’s board.  Tiny droplets of saltwater track down her ribs, stick to her hair, pool in her belly, and when she shifts to settle into the warmer water, scanning the horizon as the dusk burns down to night, Alex can’t help wish she looked as pretty, all weightless in the dying light. “I’m sorry I was so bad today.”  
  
“Just bad, huh? That’s kind.”  
  
Vicki slaps her gently before pressing the water out of her hair. It’s lost its red heat, dulling down to a cooler brown. “I can’t stay much longer – are you gonna hang around and train?”  
  
“Yeah, I think so. My sand sprints aren’t where they need to be.”  
  
“Have you told your mom yet?”  
  
Alex arches her eyebrows.  
  
“She’s gonna find out.”  
  
“She can find out once I pass. You know what she’s like.”  
  
Vicki scoffs, shakes her head. “I don’t get your mom. You could be sneaking out to smoke crack or drink or blow 20 guys a night but you’re here, training for a fucking lifeguard test. She should be proud of you.”  
  
“We’ll she’s not,” Alex mutters, knowing exactly why she can’t tell Eliza.   
  
Because last summer, when Micah Lush fainted during a surf comp on a 100 degree day, Alex had been the first to abandon her wave to paddle to him, heaving his body back onto his board until the lifeguards arrived. Eliza had faked her tenderness, her _Oh sweetheart, I’m so glad you’re alright_ as she pulled her from Micah’s family to take her home. But Alex saw through it all, saw the slap coming as soon as Kara was sent upstairs, expected the _what the hell were you thinking, Alexandra, doing something so irresponsible, how can I trust you to take care of Kara when you’re so careless, so selfish, so untrustworthy, your father would be so disappointed in you, you stupid, stupid girl, trying to be brave…  
_  
She hadn’t known how to tell Eliza that she knew she wasn’t brave. She just didn’t care if she died.   
  
Of course, Kara had heard it all, and Alex had spent half an hour convincing the crying girl that she was fine, that Eliza was just grieving, that violence could be momentarily painless when there was no warning.   
  
But even then, Alex knew it was in her – to dive, headfirst, before anyone else thought to. It came as naturally to her as balancing chemical equations, as watching the stars, as missing her father. So now, it’s not enough just to become a lifeguard next summer – even Midvale’s first female lifeguard. She wants to be the best.   
  
Vicki rests her chin on the board, a single finger tapping Alex’s shoulder. “How are things with Daniel?”  
  
“Good. He’s a good guy,” Alex says, with nowhere near the enthusiasm Vicki is clearly expecting. “He’s really sweet,” she adds.   
  
“Alex, he’s Daniel fucking Cho. He’s smart, he’s thoughtful – he’s a fucking rower for God’s sake. He’s hot. And you’ve been friends for years.”  
  
“Yeah,” Alex says, so softly the waves overpower it.  
  
“So? What’s wrong with him?” she laughs.  
  
One of the straps of Vicki’s bikini is cutting too tight into her shoulder, the skin pink. Alex doesn’t know where to look. She looks at her face. The girl’s smiling crookedly, mouth still wet.   
  
The truth is, being with Daniel feels like tracking through a place she’s never been. But Vicki, somehow, feels like stumbling through the house she grew up in in the middle of the night, finding it unrecognisable in the dark.   
  
Alex is glad. Alex doesn’t want to see.   
  
Because the only person she can imagine spending so much time with is her. She knows everything about her. She knows that she’s too honest to sneak into a second movie without buying a ticket. She knows, when she watches her sleep on Saturday mornings at her house, the exact depth her mattress sinks to under her weight, the exact slant of light that will make her turn to her. The exact pattern freckles on her right shoulder, all clustered in even numbers.   
  
“Nothing. He’s perfect.”  
  
“But…”  
  
Alex focuses on treading water, on not getting too cold. “I dunno, I just…. Maybe I don’t feel that thing, you know?”   
  
“It takes time. And you’ve had a really hard year. But he’s so good to you. I just want to see you happy.”  
  
Alex doesn’t hear her. Because while she’s talking, Vicki’s hand has closed carefully around her wrist, her thumb tracing tiny, comforting circles before she lets go.   
  
“I’m sorry Alex, I really need to get home. Thanks again for teaching me to surf – for trying anyway,” she jokes. “I’ll see you at school, OK?”  
  
“OK,” Alex breathes. _Don’t go._   
  
Vicki swims around the board to hug her, their bodies buoyant, and Alex is overwhelmed by the wet warmth of her skin, the girl’s almost bare chest pressed against her wetsuit.  
  
She does her best to sleepwalk through it all.    
  
But watching Vicki swim in, walk across the shore and down the street feels like trying to hold onto a fistful of sand. She can still feel the girl’s fingerprints on the inside of her wrist, cooling under the breath of the sea, and her chest goes tight, but she doesn’t know why.   
  
Soon enough, there’s only the soft tumble of the waves, the slow burn of the sky, and her hands white-knuckle her board.   
  
Vicki’s left her all alone with him.   
  
Alex forces herself to paddle until her lungs shred, until her heart pumps acid, carving suicide notes along the arm of every wave, long and hard and unforgiving.  
  
But even out here, away from the house, she feels him like an amputee feels a phantom limb, almost hearing his voice carry across the waves. _Good job, kiddo. That was a big one._   
  
But she can’t cry. Not even with a storm’s weight behind her eyelids – she can’t cry. Out past the waves, she sits on her board as she catches her breath, letting the ocean rock her in the palm of its hand. It feels so gentle, she thinks, for such a monstrous thing.   
  
She wonders if he saw it coming. If he was scared. The thought makes her curl up, face crumpling. Of course he was scared. Of course he knew. Of course he prayed. Everyone becomes a believer in the breath before their throat is cut.   
  
She can’t pretend that she was with him when he needed her. She can’t pretend she’d held his hand.  
  
But maybe – maybe – she can be with him now.   
  
She casts her eyes across the water to the riptide. Maybe it would be easy. Maybe it wouldn’t even hurt that much – certainly not more than this. And maybe, dying alone out here is a worthy punishment for letting him die alone up there.   
  
Nobody would miss her – only the perfect grades and gleaming trophies and cooked dinners.   
  
At the bottom of the ocean there’d be no school, no debate team, no surf competitions. No mother to disappoint. No sister to fail. No boys looking at her longer and longer. No Vicki, her smile drawing her in like the tug of an approaching wave. No house that was too quiet, too fucking quiet, without her father in it.   
  
No. At the bottom of the ocean, there’d be nothing. Nothing at all.   
  
A plane passes overhead, and its roar closes over her chest like a bear-trap.  
  
She scrambles off her board. Lets herself sink beneath the surface. Lets the dark mass of the water close over her head. And finally, when she’s deep enough in the blackness, lets herself cry and wail and scream, wishing the ocean would just take her, drag her by its teeth, drag her down, down, down, to be with what was left of her father.   
  


* * *

  
“I don’t get it.”  
  
Alex sighs, leaving her stirring to chop vegetables as she tilts her head to Kara. “Which part?”  
  
“All of it. Math was different on my planet.”  
  
 _No one cares about your fucking planet, Kara_ , she wants to say. _It’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone._   
  
“You could be as good at it as you are at English, you’re just not trying hard enough,” Alex snaps in exasperation, almost slicing her finger. She takes a breath, looks at the girl sitting at her kitchen table with downcast eyes, hair falling around her glasses. Hears her mother’s voice in her head – _what are you, Alex, if you can’t look after her?_  
  
She sighs, “Let me see, OK?”  
  
Kara nods silently, twisting her book around to face Alex before sitting on her hands.  
  
“You’re oversimplifying,” Alex says. “You can’t add those two x’s together – they have different powers.”  
  
“Sorry,” Kara mutters. “I forgot.”  
  
“It’s OK. Just try again,” Alex replies. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, I just -”  
  
“I know. Can’t I help with dinner?”  
  
Alex has to fight her flinch, remembering the times Kara got too excited while cooking – ripped the door off the fridge, sliced through a chopping board and into the counter. Always Alex’s fault. “No. Just focus on school.”  
  
“But Alex,” she says gently, “You have to focus on _everything_.”  
  
Alex fights the urge to grind her teeth, going back to slicing, her fingers tight around the knife she doesn’t trust herself alone with. “That’s the way it is.”  
  
They eat dinner in the nearest thing to silence. Kara tries to tell her how she’s trying to interview the new exchange student for the school paper, what fascinating earthly custom she learned about in class, and _did you know that lots of earth cultures have sun gods just like Rao?_ Alex hears none of it - only the scratch of her fork against the plate, pushing around the food she can’t taste, can’t bring herself to swallow, when there’s an empty chair across from her.  
  
She forces herself up before she kicks the thing across the room. Dumps her food back in the fridge, storms upstairs, and Kara knows better than to say anything in the wake of her tornado.   
  
In the bathroom, Alex turns up the water so hot it steams the mirrors. She doesn’t want to see her wasting body, the sinking gaps between her ribs like sandbanks. She forces herself under the spray, the water hot enough to raise welts, for a count of ten, twenty, thirty, until a silent cry catches in her throat. But it’s OK, it’s OK, she won’t leave marks like this, she’ll still look perfect, perfect, perfect.  
  
There’s a pounding on the door. “Alex.”  
  
“Just a second,” she chokes out. _Stay under. Stay under._ Her knees buckle.  
  
“I know something’s wrong, Alex. I can hear your heart.”  
  
Alex scoffs. Of course she fucking can. She can never get a moment to herself in this house.   
  
“Alex, open up. Please.”  
  
She turns off the water and braces herself against the sink, tears drying on her cheeks. Her chest is heaving, and her hands shake, but somehow she puts her clothes back on, covers herself, makes herself look “fine”.  
  
She opens the door. “ _What_?”  
  
“You’ve been crying,” Kara notices.  
  
“Like you care,” Alex snaps, pushing past her. “There. Shower’s yours.”  
  
But the young girl follows her down the hallway. “Do you want to look at the stars tonight on the roof? We used to do that all the time, remember?”  
  
“Another lifetime.”  
  
But Kara persists. “We can do it to remember him, Alex. I miss him too.”  
  
That makes her turn on her heels, with almost enough rage in her to push the girl against the wall, and scream “ _How_ , Kara? You didn’t even know him.”  
  
“Alex -”  
  
“He wasn’t your dad, he was mine. He didn’t love you. He just felt sorry for you.”  
  
“I’m just trying to -”  
  
“No, fuck you, Kara. After Dad died, all Eliza kept telling me was how she needed me to take more responsibility around the house, how much more she was going to rely on me to look after you. ‘Don’t cry too loud in the house, you’ll scare Kara. Concepts of death might be different on Krypton, you’ll need to explain things to Kara. Poor thing’s already lost her planet, you need to be there for Kara.’ My _fucking dad died_ and somehow it was still all about fucking Kara.  Is there _any_ part of my life you haven’t touched?”  
  
“Alex, wait,” Kara cries, reaching out to her.   
  
She jerks away. “Or what? You’re gonna break my arm again?”  
  
“That was an accident, I’m better now. Please, Alex -”  
  
“No, just stop. Stop talking to me like you’re my sister. Stop talking to me at all. Just leave me alone.”  
  
With that, she shoves the whimpering girl away from her, and Kara accepts the violence willingly. She bounds through the house in a blind rage, a white heat, and before she knows it she’s on the floor of a closet she’s almost torn apart, howling into her father’s favourite sweater. It doesn’t smell like him anymore, but she inhales with shuddering lungs anyway, holds it so tight the fibres scratch beneath her fingernails, and she wails, and she begs, and she screams how much she hates him, and for the first time since he’s died, she doesn’t bother trying to stay quiet.   
  
It’s a long while before her caterwauls become whimpers, her tears and snot and spit sticking to her face, to his clothes. Only when she’s able to breathe again, when she’s lying on her back in a pile of his clothes, staring at the roof, does Kara come in, quietly padding across the room to sit on the floor. Alex rolls away from her, clutches one of his shirts to her chest. “Fuck off, Kara.”  
  
She hears the girl sigh. “I know he wasn’t my father, Alex. But I did love him. And I know you don’t want to talk to me right now, but I did lose my dad too.”  
  
A choked sob resonates in the room, echoes in the closet. Alex buries her face in the shirt, rocking herself and shaking her head hard, and Kara has to close her eyes, dizzied by the sound of her sister’s blood rushing to a drumless beat.   
  
Eventually, Alex calms, stroking golden ratio swirls on the cuffs of one of his jackets. “Kara,” she croaks, swallowing hard. “On Krypton, do you believe in ghosts?”  
  
“No,” Kara murmurs. “But we believe we join our ancestors, when it’s time. He’s not alone, Alex.”  
  
She chokes a little, hiccups on her tears. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel him everywhere. It’s like I’m going crazy.”  
  
“You’re not, Alex. You’re just grieving.”  
  
Wiping her face with her sleeve, she whimpers, “Does it get easier?”  
  
Kara softens, edges a little closer to lay a hand on her sister’s shoulder. Amazingly, Alex lets her. “It still hurts. But one day, you’ll think of something funny he did, and you’ll laugh.”  
  
Alex has to scoff at that. She can’t imagine laughing ever again. Her chest goes tight, and she wants to burn the world down, wants to trade places with him. Anything but this. “I just want him back,” she sobs, and Kara smooths her hand down her arm, careful not to hurt her.  
  
“I know Alex. I’m so sorry.”  
  
After Alex’s heart slows, the flow of her blood smoothing out, Kara takes her hand and pulls her up, helping her hang Jeremiah’s clothes before taking her to the roof. 

The sky is especially clear tonight, but even the brightest stars pale in comparison to her desire to be with him.   
  
A blanket around their shoulders, the two sisters watch the stars glow, Kara pointing out their favourites, telling her all the Kryptonian legends of how they got their names. Laughing about how Jeremiah always thought constellations made no sense, how he’d draw weird faces for them between the dots.   
  
And for a moment, Alex can almost forget about it all. She can almost forget that she needs to wash her father’s stained clothes before Eliza gets home, that she still hasn’t touched her essay, that she said the most horrible things to Kara, that her father probably felt everything, everything, everything when he died.   
  
For a moment, she lets her sister hold her, sighing into her arms, imagining him bringing them hot chocolate.  

“Alex, look.”

When she wipes her eyes and looks up, the sky’s alight with shooting stars, and she gasps along with her sister. “A meteor shower.”

“His favourite,” Kara murmurs, pulling her impossibly closer. “He must have asked them to come out for you.”

And for the first time in months, Alex laughs through her tears, eyes sparkling with reflected light. Because the notion is ridiculous. Impossible. So impossible.

And yet it’s the exact sort of thing that he would do.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on tumblr @ jiemba


End file.
